Abstract
Nowadays, the advanced comprehensive utilization and the complete prohibition of burning fully covered straws in croplands have become increasingly important in agriculture engineering. As a kind of direct straw-mulching method in China, conservation tillage with straw smashing is an effective method to reduce pollution and enhance fertility. In view of the high straw-returning yields, complicated manual operation, and the poor performance of straw detection with machine vision, this study introduces a novel form of uniformity detection for straws based on overlapping region analysis. An image-processing technology using a novel overlapping region analysis was proposed to overcome the inefficiency and low precision resulting from the manual identification of the straw uniformity. In this study, the debris in the gray map was removed according to region characteristics. Through using morphological theory with overlapping region analysis in low-density cases, straws of appropriate length can be identified and then uniformity detection can be accomplished. Compared with traditional threshold segmentation methods, the advantages of an accurate identification, fast operation, and high efficiency contribute to the better performance of the innovative overlapping region analysis. Finally, the proposed algorithm was verified through detecting the uniformity in low-density cases, with an average accuracy rate of 97.69%, providing a novel image recognition solution for automatic straw-mulching systems.
Highlights
To reduce the influence of straw burning and utilize the resource sufficiently, some countries have published targeted policies in the comprehensive utilization of straw and achieved positive implementation effects, especially in terms of new energy and conservation tillage with straw mulching [1]
More than 60% of the total straw produced in Canada, 73% of the total straw produced in the United Kingdom, more than 66% of the rice straw in Japan, and almost all the rice-wheat straw in South Korea are directly returned to the field
This study investigated a novel image recognition technique for straw uniformity in low-density cases based on overlapping region analysis
Summary
To reduce the influence of straw burning and utilize the resource sufficiently, some countries have published targeted policies in the comprehensive utilization of straw and achieved positive implementation effects, especially in terms of new energy and conservation tillage with straw mulching [1]. The amount of straw returned to the field is about 68% of the total straw produced in the United States. Due to high rice-wheat production in China, a large quantity of field straw will seriously affect sowing quality during the rice–wheat rotation period [2,3]. As a kind of direct straw-mulching method in China, conservation tillage with straw smashing is an effective method to reduce pollution and enhance fertility in agriculture. This is the main existing production pattern among the grain-producing areas in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River [4,5]. Nonuniform straw mulch will affect the Agriculture 2022, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW
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